Kaija Mathews doesn't want to talk to anyone, ever, so she's hiding in a cave in the desert all alone. Or, she would be all alone if fifteen years of deep meditation beside a magic spring hadn't cursed her with the ability to converse with animals. The other creatures always respected her privacy, until the massacres began. Suddenly, she can't get rid of the local fauna and their stories of an insatiable monster that kills without ceasing, leaving...